To farmer Moss, in Langar Vale, came down
His only daughter from her school in town;
A tender, timid maid! who knew not ho
To pass a pig-sty, or to face a cow:
Smiling she came, with petty talents graced,
A fair complexion and a slender waist.
    Used to spare meals, disposed in manner pure,
Her father's kitchen she could ill endure;
Whereby the steaming beef he hungry sat,
And laid at once a pound upon his plate;
Hot from the field her eager brother seixed
An equal part, and hunger's rage appeased;
The air, surcharged with moisture, flagg'd around,
And the offended damsel sigh'd and frown'd;
The swelling fat in lumps conglomerate laid,
And fancy's sickness seized the loathing maid.
from The Widow's Tale

"Though nature's sternest painter yet the best" Byron

George Crabbe (1754-1832) arrived late on the Augustan scene. Born in the same decade as Burns and Blake, he outlived Keats by more than ten years. His father was a warehouse-keeper in Aldeburgh, Suffolk. Schooled in Bungay and Stowmarket, he was apprenticed to an apothecary. In 1779 he went to London as a literary adventurer, arriving without introductions. Edmund Burke became his patron and transformed his fortunes. The Village (1783),and after a silence The Parish Register (1807), The Borough (1810) and Tales (1812), his main works followed.

Crabbe wanted his readers to feel his writing - accounts of rural and provincial life, of individuals and communities, of landscapes - not only as narrative but in circumstantial detail - some of it harsh and shocking. Peter Grimes is his most famous character, one whom Benjamin Britten found irresistible. 'It is worth registering from the outset,' Jem Poster says, 'the enduring intimacy of Crabbe's contact with the world, the sheer physicality of his grasp of things: the strengths of his poetry are more easily understood if we can visualise him actually grubbing at the slimy roots of the marshplants he so vividly described, delivering a neighbour's child, or assisting his father by piling butter-casks in a quayside warehouse'.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Bibliography



The Village

Book One



The Parish Register

from the Introduction: Lines 129-268

from Baptisms: Lines 403-448

from Marriages: Lines 313-357

from Burials: Lines 233-412



The Borough

Letter I General Description

Letter IX Amusements

Letter XVIII The Poor and their Dwellings

Letter XIX The Parish-Clerk

Letter XXII Peter Grimes



Tales

Tale I The Dumb Orators

Tale II The Parting Hour

Tale VI The Frank Courtship

Tale VII The Widow's Tale

Tale X The Lover's Journey



Tales of the Hall

Book IV Adventures of Richard



Notes